How to Set Boundaries Without Guilt (Ep. 7)

If you’ve been saying yes when you mean no, holding back what you really need, or feeling guilty any time you try to put yourself first — this episode is for you.

We’re talking unfiltered truth about boundaries and guilt — why setting them feels so uncomfortable, where that guilt actually comes from, and how to stop abandoning yourself to keep the peace.

It’s time to stop letting guilt run the show and start building boundaries that feel clean, grounded, and aligned.

🎧 In this episode, I share:

• Why guilt shows up when you try to set a boundary
• How your nervous system has been trained to equate control with safety
• The hidden cost of doing it all yourself
• The difference between self-protection and self-trust
• How to honour your capacity and your power
• A new way to see boundaries — without shame, fear, or apology

Boundaries aren’t about being harsh or cold.
They’re about showing up fully as yourself — with love and clarity.

👉 Hit play, take the challenge at the end, and tag @skymareesteele on Instagram to share what you’re finally giving yourself permission to do!

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FREE 3-Day Masterclass: From People Pleaser to Powerhouse

Break free from the 'Nice Girl' rules, set strong boundaries, and reclaim your power to achieve meaningful results in 2025.

👉 Sign up now at: uniquelyyoupsychology.com/freemasterclass

Transcript

0:00

Welcome to Confidence Unfiltered. I'm your host, Sky Maree Steele, a clinical psychologist, business owner, A DHD, and recovering people pleaser. If you've spent your life trying to keep everyone else happy while feeling like you're never quite enough, you are in the right place. Here we ditch the people pleasing, silence, the self-doubt, and have real unfiltered conversations about confidence, boundaries, and building a life that feels unapologetically yours. No fluff, no perfection, just raw, real talk to help you trust yourself, show up fully and own your dam power. Let's dive in. Welcome to another episode of Confidence Unfiltered. So today I wanna talk about boundaries, and as a people pleaser, A DHD, somebody who has experienced anxiety my entire life, this is something that has taken me a long time to learn, and it's definitely an episode that is close to my heart. So I wanna talk to you today about boundaries, about how to keep them. And how to stop feeling guilty when you actually implement them. So you know that thing we know we should do. But when it comes to actually do it, we hesitate. Anytime we are noticing that word should showing up, it's generally because we are not in alignment with what we wanna choose, with what we want to do, with what we want to say. We are too caught up in. Upsetting people feeling guilty for saying no, thinking that we've gotta be nice all the time, or just simply being afraid to put ourselves first. So if any of that sounds familiar to you hear is the truth. If you do not set boundaries, people will set them for you. Guess what? Other people's boundaries will not prioritize you. They won't prioritize what you need. They won't prioritize what you want, your dreams, your goals, or your wellbeing. They're simply going to be what suits them. So today we're going to get into why boundaries aren't actually selfish. You know, as the people pleaser, this is something that I thought for such a long time that setting a boundary saying what I think or what I feel or what I need somehow was wrong because it meant that I was being a bad person. Right? We are gonna learn that there are these biggest myths that we've been told that just they're just not true. Right? I wanna debunk them with you. I wanna have a conversation around how we get to look at enforcing boundaries with other people. One of the most important things that I actually think isn't talked about enough when it comes to boundary setting is how to hold steady when someone gives us pushback, because it's one thing to create and to set a boundary, and equally though, it's sometimes even harder to hold steady when the response isn't the one that we want. So by the end of this episode, I really hope that I have you saying hell yes to yourself and hell yes to boundaries, and a big fuck no to this energy draining bullshit that boundaries are selfish. So let's get into it. So let's start, like why are boundaries like the, the ultimate confidence hack? Like why are they actually so important when it comes to building our self-esteem? Building out confidence, accepting who we are? Well, confidence isn't just about how you show up, it's also about what you allow in your world when you set boundaries. And I know you've heard this before, but I really. Want this to land. When you set boundaries, you are teaching people the standard in which you are willing to live your life. When you don't set boundaries, you are actually giving away your control. You're giving away your time, you're giving away your energy, and you're actually giving away your emotions because not having boundaries means that how you feel is now dependent on other people. Confident. People aren't confident because they're fearless, right? They're not confident because they don't experience anxiety. They're confident because they protect their energy, they respect themselves. They see themselves as worthy of having boundaries. So I'd love to know like Sky, Marie Steel on Instagram. What are some of the myths that you've been told growing up around boundaries and sometimes these myths that we are told, sometimes they are so in your face, but sometimes they are really sneaky and tricky and in the background that it's not until whether at all that we actually realize the messages we were taught. Now, the first one, and I've touched on it already quite a few times, and I know. It's a common one for so many people is this idea that boundaries mean you're selfish. Boundaries do not mean that you are selfish, right? They don't mean that you don't care, right? This is where I used to get caught up. It's like, well, if I set a boundary and then I upset Betty, and then she's going to feel bad, and then that means that I don't care about her, or I'm not worrying about her needs, that's actually not true. Boundaries literally mean. That you care about yourself too, right? Imagine your phone battery, right? And if you keep saying yes to everyone, you drain it faster, right? Setting boundaries is literally like plugging yourself in so you can actually show up as your best self, right? If you keep using your phone without setting a boundary, like I need to plug it in, I need to give it some, you know, electricity, it's gonna die, right? Now, literally right, what will happen to your life and the direction of it is it will die in a sense of not being the life that you wanna live for you. You'll start living everybody else's life. You'll get pushed around, you will lose direction. You might lose a sense of identity because you are not choosing you. So boundaries literally mean that you care enough about yourself. You respect yourself enough that you are going to choose you people. Pleasing leads to burnout, boundaries leads to us having more energy and more vitality to be able to live our life. Now, what about myth two, right? If I say no, people will leave or people will get mad. Here is the thing, and I really. Want people to get a concept of this because some of these things like you can be like, I've heard this before. I want you to hear what I'm saying is that the right people will always respect your boundaries. People who love you, they aren't the ones who are gonna show up with the guilt trip. People who benefit from your boundaries, they're the ones who are going to give you the pushback, that kind of silent treatment. Get mad or get upset. It's the ones who benefit from it, not the people who actually give a fuck. The people who care about you are going to be the ones who are willing to have a conversation and to get in a new dance with you. You know, if someone can't handle your boundaries, that is a reflection on them. Not you. The people who actually love you will actually want you to respect yourself. They will want you to have a boundary. They will wanna know where they stand in a relationship with you. They will wanna know where your needs are. So there gets to be a reciprocal relationship. If your relationship relies on one person consistently overextending themselves, then it is not. A healthy relationship. And here's what can happen when we start setting the boundary, is we learn the people who are willing to kind of be messy and clunky and have conversations and get in the new dance with us, and then the people who will just consistently try to hold us back. So it gives us opportunity to start seeing who we actually wanna keep in our world. Now, the third myth, I need to justify my boundary. I need to have a valid reason or an excuse as to why I am setting the boundary in the first place. And the old sentence still stands here. No is a complete sentence. You actually do not owe anyone an essay on why you're setting a boundary. You do not have to prove that your boundary is reasonable. Because it's your fucking boundary, and the more you explain your boundary, a lot of the times, the more pushback you get because people start to see that they get to push holes in what you're presenting to them. They see the lack of confidence in the over justification, practicing setting a boundary, and moving on. Can be one of the trickiest things and most important things that we do. You know, as an A DHD, it is my nature to waffle on as well, right? To talk. I could talk with marbles in my mouth underwater, but equally what I have had to learn is to get clear on the message I'm trying to deliver. And it is okay to practice your boundaries in the background. And it is okay for them to be clunky and messy in the beginning, but what is not okay is for you to feel like your boundary isn't accepted unless there's a reason that is acceptable to somebody else. Now, how do we set boundaries without this, I don't know, fear? Or for some people, like when I first started boundaries, it almost felt like this terror in my body. And I'd go red and I'd go hot, and I would shake. Like, how do we set boundaries without this fear or guilt consuming? Every part of us, you know, setting boundaries, it's not about being rude, right? It's about being clear. So there is a three step and because I like to make things sound cool, right? Yes. 45, whatever run with me. I use the word cool. There is this three step powerhouse formula for setting boundaries. The first thing. Is getting clear on what you need, and if you're a people pleaser, if you maybe have a DHD, you got other stuff going on. If you've never asked yourself what you need before, this step can feel super tricky and super overwhelming, but it is a practice in getting to know yourself. It's really fucking hard to set a boundary if you don't know what your needs are. If you don't know what you like, if you don't know what you don't like. So it's starting to ask yourself questions like, where in my life do I feel drained? Who am I with? When I feel drained, where in what? Like environments am I in, when I feel drained? And it's just starting to note this information. Right. Awareness is the key to everything. The next thing to ask yourself if you just have no idea where to start, is, where in my life do I feel resentful? Anywhere in your life where resentment shows up, I can pretty much guarantee you what that means is there is a boundary violation, and the boundary violation is either coming from you haven't set it or you've set it and somebody's stepping over it. So notice like what environments am I in, where I feel resentful? What specific situations am I in when I feel resentful? What relationships does resentment consistently show up in? And it's just starting to gather in a notebook information about where boundaries might be lacking. Where your needs might actually be that you've been overlooking for such a long time. Then the other question to ask yourself is, where am I feeling overwhelmed? Like in what parts of my life? Like are you feeling overwhelmed at work? Are you feeling overwhelmed at home? Are you feeling overwhelmed with friends in the gym, in the relationship with your partner? Right, with the decision you just made to study and go to uni or. It doesn't matter. It's just starting to notice where you're overwhelmed, because wherever you are, overwhelmed again might be because of a lack of boundaries. And remember, when we talk about boundaries, boundaries come in two main forms. There are so many different boundaries, right? But there's two main forms. There are internal boundaries where you are violating a boundary around yourself like it might be, hey. I'm really hungry, but instead of me actually stopping what I'm doing and respecting myself and going to eat, right, like I cross that boundary line, right? And I'm like, no, I'm not gonna respect myself. I'm not gonna go and eat. I'm gonna stay and do this thing and not respect myself enough to get some fucking food. Like the basics, right? So there's internal boundaries, external boundaries are when it comes to other people, other places, other situations. And so you might notice that you get angry at yourself. Check in. Are you getting at your like angry at yourself because you're not doing the thing you wanna do because you haven't followed through again on the thing you said you were gonna follow through on? Because you're not taking care of yourself. Right? Start to notice when we are looking at drained, resentful, overwhelmed, is it stuff I'm doing to myself? Which means I need to work on boundary with self. Is it something that's happening from external sources and I need to put a boundary outside of myself. Now, the second part of boundaries is starting to communicate clearly and directly. And the way that I did this to start with was I literally would write on a piece of paper my top five boundaries. Right. And what is one that I was gonna work on? So the thing that I had to work on the most, and I still do, is saying what I think. Like if somebody upsets me or hurts my feelings, it's about practicing using my voice to say, Hey, when you did that thing, that wasn't okay, and I have a standard around you not doing that. So I had to practice that. But the way I practiced that was I read it down on paper. What do I wanna say? How does the boundary visually look then? Yes, motherfuckers, you need to listen. You go to the mirror, right before you all roll your eyes at me. You go to the mirror and you practice articulating your boundary because speaking your boundary, like your body language is equally as important as what you say. If I'm saying something like, if I'm saying no to someone with my head down and my shoulders hunched over, turned away from them, that is not exuberating. Is that even a word? We're gonna run with it. I like that word, right? Like exuberating, right? That's not letting them know that you're confident in your boundary. And you open yourself up to that boundary being pushed around. So write it down, practice it in front of the mirror, practice articulating it, practice saying it out loud. Practice your voice. Like if you have, are a people pleaser, you haven't had a voice for a long time, think about like, what are your tones sound like? Are you quiet? Are you loud? Are you taking pauses so that people hear you? Are you a fast speaker and people, blah, blah, whatever, right? But just start noticing for yourself what you do so you can practice articulating the boundary. The other thing we wanna do is drop the over-explaining. So once we've said the boundary, we practice the full stop. And when we get to the full stop, what generally happens is we get feelings. We get the feeling of fear, we get guilt, we get anxiety, we get the oh fuck moment, right? Has anyone experienced that where you set the boundary and it's almost like a delayed reaction where you're like, oh, now I feel sick. Right? That is the moment where it's practicing being with our feelings. I'm noticing anxiety. That's okay. I'm noticing guilt. That's okay. We wanna stop making these feelings mean more than what they do. Feelings come and go all of the time. The meaning that we give to them can sometimes be very problematic. When we see guilt show up, we can interpret that as meaning we've done something wrong. When we see anxiety show up, we can interpret that as something bad is gonna happen. Neither of that is necessarily true. Anxiety is simply a feeling that says this is new and different, and I haven't been there before. Guilt says This is uncomfortable. I don't know someone's reaction. Neither have to mean more than that. So part of the boundary is we say it, we full stop it, and we be with the feelings we label them, but we make space for them to be there. The next thing we wanna remind ourselves, and this is the holding steady. Right is we wanna practice enforcing boundaries like a boss, right? Expect pushback, right? People are not, who don't care about you, going to care about your boundary. They are going to care about what they want so that the minute you set a boundary, you may be challenged on it, somebody might push back on it. What I want you to do in those moments is practice holding steady and holding steady. Means sticking to your boundary even when it's uncomfortable. And as simplistic as this answer may sound right, I know it sounds simplistic, but the way to hold steady inner boundary is literally to repeat the boundary no matter what's coming at you. Right? So somebody says to you, oh, I want you to come to my party. Actually, I'm not coming. Oh, you're such a bad friend if you don't come to my party. I hear you and I'm not coming. Oh, but blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, and I'm not coming. Right? It's like when you have the little child who's like, I want dessert. I want dessert, and you're like, after dinner, I want dessert. Now after dinner, I want dessert. Now after dinner, it's literally repeating whatever your boundary is, without being swayed into different conversations. When people don't like your boundary, like you think about teenagers, like, I've got a few right? They will take you on a path of self-destruction, on a different tangent, in a different story where you end up in a different room screaming about something else, right? To try and get you off track so that they get their needs met. And I want you to think about boundaries as holding steady with that little child or that teen that just says, I am now in repeat mode. All right? This is what I want you to practice. And you can like create boundary scripts for yourself. You know, get the old index cards and write your boundaries down. Go to the bathroom and practice your boundary before you come out and talk to your boss, or talk to your friend, or talk to your work colleague. And it's just practicing, flipping the script. So instead of saying maybe things like, I feel really bad, but okay, I guess I can kind of help you with that. It's. I'm noticing my anxiety. That's okay. I'm noticing my guilt. That's okay. And then going to the person and going, actually, I can't help you with that. Full stop. And being with discomfort or, oh, I don't know. Maybe, I guess I could move it through a few things around. Sure. Uh, yeah. Okay. I'll do it. Instead of that, it's like, I actually appreciate the invite and equally though, I've actually got something else on so I can't come. It's taking out the ambiguity, it's taking out the, uh, uh, uh, maybe, I don't know. Sh Oh, okay. It's owning a position. Anytime you try to set a boundary with words like, maybe, I suppose so. Oh, I, I, I guess I should. Oh, maybe I could. There's no, like, there's no solid decision. Boundaries are about making a solid decision within yourself that you share. Confidence is practicing saying no without, like trying to get rid of guilt, without trying to get rid of anxiety. It's doing the boundary, knowing that you are gonna have feelings, and equally not making them mean more than what they need to mean. When I said before about like expecting, I know tangential sky, right? Expecting resistance. Some people are going to be so used to you saying yes or knowing a response that you're gonna give, that when you change it up and you set a boundary, they're actually just going to go into an old habit to get you back in the old dance. And some of those people initially might be people who do care about you, but they're just a bit of a loss because they don't know this you, they don't know This boundary setting boss who actually stands up for themselves. So repeating yourself, having conversations with people who care about you to say, Hey, I'm practicing boundaries. You might notice that I actually say no to things that I used to say yes to, because I really just want to be true to myself. You can let the people who love, you know, so they're not as big of a, like, what the fuck, so that they can support you in your boundary setting. Okay. And remember too as you go, like people might get disappointed. People you love and care about might get disappointed, but you are not responsible for other people's feelings or experiences of your boundary. Your only job in setting the boundary is respect. And respect doesn't come from people pleasing. Respect comes from the way. You articulate the boundary people's experiences of the boundary that is totally on them to go through that themselves. So I have a challenge for you this week, right? And I wanna point out too, like I. When I started setting boundaries, I had a thing that I called like a boundary hangover, and it was literally like, I would be like, oh my God, I'm gonna be a bus ass and I'm gonna, you know, be this powerhouse human and I'm gonna be confident and I'd set a boundary and I'd feel really good about myself and I'd go to sleep. And I'd wake up in the morning and I'd be like, oh my God, I feel sick. And I'd be like, oh my God, I need to go back and tell that person that I'll do the thing. I'll need to go and apologize for setting a boundary. Like I had this literal visceral hangover for setting a boundary. And what I learned, just like any hangover, is that if you sit with it, if you be with it, if you just allow it to ride its course. It passes. You do not need to change your boundary. You do not need to apologize. You do not need to retract anything. Your boundary hangover will pass, I promise, right? Like it will happen. And the more you practice it, the quicker it will happen. So your challenge for this week, set one boundary. Choose one area of your life where you've been saying yes, where you wanna say no, or where you haven't been using your voice, or where you haven't been giving your opinion or whatever it is, right? But choose one that you really wanna set, and I want you to write it out. I want you to practice it in front of the mirror. I want you to share with someone that you love, that you are close to, Hey, I am gonna do this thing where I'm setting the boundary. And I would really, I'd love your support. Like I would love for you to really have my back in this and check in with me so that you feel super cared for while you're practicing the boundary. And then I want you to set it right, and if you get pushback, I want you to repeat it. And if you get pushback again. I want you to repeat it again, and if you get a boundary hangover, I want you to hold steady and I do not want you to retract it, and I want you to practice this on repeat over and over and over again until you notice that it becomes easier because it will in time, it's a practice. And let me know, like if you want to share with me at Sky Maree Steel on Instagram, what your boundary is like. Let me know how did it go? What boundary did you set? What came up for you in setting the boundary? Because here is your reminder. The people who truly care about you, they will respect your boundaries. The ones who don't. They were only ever benefiting from you not having a boundary in the first place. And the most confident people, they are not the ones that say yes to everything. They are the ones who sit with the discomfort of anxiety and fear and guilt, and they do the thing. Anyway. Alright, everybody, until next time. Go out there and start setting some boundaries.